Google Maps Promotes Google's Santa Tracker

When opening Google Maps, Google shows a card that promotes its own Santa Tracker. There's also a countdown: "X days till Santa takes off".

"On Christmas Eve we'll be proudly showcasing a Santa's dashboard, the technology that powers his sleigh during his around-the-world journey. We've received this special preview from one of Santa's many developer elves, who are hard at work in the North Pole helping Santa prepare for his big day. Santa's dashboard - featuring the latest and greatest in Google Maps technology and sleigh engineering - will allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way," informs Google.

Google Drops Support for Security Questions

This is not that new, but I thought it's worth sharing. Google no longer supports security questions and you can't use them to access your account if you forget your password.



The "security question" section of the Google Account settings page informs users that "We no longer support security questions as a way to access your account. Please consider adding a recovery phone or recovery email address to keep your account secure." You can only delete your security question.

Security questions weren't a great way to protect an account since many answers could be guessed or found using a Google search. For example, Sarah Palin had her Yahoo email account compromised by someone who found the answers to her secret questions. "The hacker simply reset Palin's password using her birthdate, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search."

Google Takeout Lets You Export Tasks and Saved Places

Google Takeout added 2 new services: Google Tasks and Maps (your places). You can export your tasks from Gmail, your Google Maps reviews and the places you starred or saved in Google Maps.

One of the reasons why some Google products are added to Google Takeout is that they're about to be discontinued and Takeout provides an easy way to export data. I assume that Google Tasks will be discontinued and replaced by other services like Google Keep or Google Now.

New Interface for Google Account Settings

The settings page for Google Accounts has a new URL: myaccount.google.com and a new interface powered by Material Design. The page is now responsive, it no longer uses tabs and it shows more information at a glance.

Some of the sections have been updated to Material Design, while others still use the old interface.

{ via Florian Kiersch. }

Take YouTube Videos Offline on your Mobile

YouTube users in India rejoice. You can now download YouTube videos on your Android or iOS device using the official YouTube app itself and watch the videos later while you are offline or on a slow connection.

It takes a few easy steps to download a video on the YouTube app. Open a video, tap the download button (see screenshot), choose the resolution for the downloaded video and it will begin to download on your device. There’s a new “Offline” section in the YouTube app where you can find a list of all videos that are currently in the download queue or available for offline watching.

The offline feature is available on the YouTube app for both Android and iPhone.

Related: How to Play YouTube Videos in the Background

That said, there are certain obvious limitations. One, not every video available on the YouTube website is available for download. The offline mode is mostly disabled for music videos and movies.

Also, the downloaded videos can only be watched inside the YouTube app. I did some digging on Android and it turns out that YouTube saves the videos into smaller chunks as .exo files, a format that is not supported in other media players.

There are however no restrictions around the number of videos that you can take offline with the YouTube app, you are only limited by the free storage available on your iPhone or Android phone.

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The story, Take YouTube Videos Offline on your Mobile , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 11/12/2014 under Android, IPhone, YouTube, Software.

My Maps in Google Drive

Custom maps created in Google My Maps are now saved in Google Drive. You can also create custom maps from Google Drive by clicking the "New" button, then picking "More" and "Google My Maps".

"Over the next week, all the maps you've created will also be accessible in Google Drive, so you can easily organize, manage and share them," informs Google. For now, I've only been able to find new maps, not the maps created before the Drive integration.

YouTube's Updated Autoplay Experiment

There's a new version of YouTube's autoplay experiment. Back in August, YouTube started to test an autoplay feature that automatically plays related videos. The feature is enabled by default and you can disable it.

The updated experiment has at least 2 improvements. YouTube now remembers when you disable autoplay and the feature is no longer enabled again when you play a new video. Another change is the "up next" screen that's displayed before the next video starts playing.

Here's how you can enable the experimental feature. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:



1. open youtube.com in a new tab



2. load your browser's developer console:



* Chrome or Opera 15+ - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac



* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac



* Internet Explorer 8+ - press F12 and select the "Console" tab



* Safari 6+ - if you haven't enabled the Develop menu, open Preferences from the Safari menu, go to the Advanced tab and check "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Close Preferences and then press Command-Option-C to show the console.



* Opera 12 - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console".



3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:



document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=uGnSnmT-ukQ; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();



4. press Enter and close the console.



Open a random video to see the autoplay feature. To disable the experiment, use the same instructions, but replace the code from step 3 with this one:



document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Google Removes Old Firefox Start Page

Firefox's start page used to be a page hosted by Google: http://ift.tt/KACNjX. Firefox 4 changed this and switched to an internal page back in 2011. Google has now removed the customized homepage with Firefox branding and redirects to the regular homepage. You can still find the page in Google's cache.

The start page still used the black bar navigation menu, the old Google logo, the old Firefox logo and informed users that they're "not on the latest version of Firefox".

Bing Suggests Chrome Users to Switch to IE

I loaded Bing's homepage in Chrome for Windows and got this message: "Using Chrome? Make the switch. Get the faster Internet Explorer."

Switching from Chrome to Internet Explorer may seem strange. After all, Internet Explorer is bundled with Windows and all Windows users browse the Web using Internet Explorer if they don't install other browsers. The ad reminds Windows users that Internet Explorer has improved and they should install the latest version.



Google's homepage has promoted Chrome by using similar ads when loading the homepage in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and other browsers.